Friday, January 31, 2014

Much more goodies to show today, including my favorite card of the haul...

2006 Bowman Chrome Futures Game Pre-Rookie Refractor. Such a nice card, and only a buck.

A couple smaller-time, but still awesome, refractors from 2013 Bowman Chrome: Shin-Soo Choo and Homer Bailey.

Billy Hamilton from 2013 Bowman Chrome Prospects and 2012 Bowman Chrome Franchise All-Stars with Joey Votto. Hamilton has huge appeal among non-Reds collectors, which makes his cards tough to get a hold of cheaply. My collection is scant in the Billy Hamilton department.

Thursday, January 30, 2014

As in the show was a small one, not the cards. Well, except for four of them. I've missed the past two quarterly mega-shows, which is a shame. But I found some time to hit a small 5-dealer gig amidst the snowy turmoil of the midwest winter. The dime boxes were pretty sorry, so I went mostly into dreaded 50 cent boxes. Pretty happy with the caliber of cards though. How bout we start 'er up with 20 brand new Griffeys?

Some serial numbered goodness: 2002 Finest Xfractor Adam Dunn #'d/99, 2013 Topps Gold Henry Rodriguez #'d/2013, 2004 Donruss Leather & Lumber Rivals Insert #'d/2499. Love the Dunn. Also, a point of order, I've finally decided to actually remove the 'protective coating' on cards like this. Some may find this to be blasphemous heresy, but since I will never sell my precious Reds cards, I'd rather enjoy seeing the card in full than 'protecting it's value'.

1994 Select Select's Best Hit-and-Run Insert Barry Larkin and a 1994 Donruss Dominators Ripken/Larkin/Cordero. On the 'protective removal' notion, this is the card that finally broke me. Look at that egregious blocking of Mr. Cordero. After the scan, I peeled it off, and it felt so good. Then I went and did it with that Dunn from above, and it felt good too. This will happen from now on. Maybe I'll even dip into my Finest pages and peel all those off too. I'm all tingly just thinking about it.

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

You know what these are? These are filthy, rotten, disgusting non-Reds baseball cards. They are all that remain in my house of non-Reds (other than vintage goodness). I'm tired of looking at them. They sicken me. They represent me buying blasters and repacks from retail stores. In other words, shelling out my money for cards that aren't Reds. Well I'm done with that. Not one more penny will be spent on the purchase of cards that aren't of my team.

So what does this mean for you? It means you may have them. They're bundled by team. If you wish to claim a team, comment here, or comment in the page for which I made a tab up top. What do I want in return? Not much. I figure it'll cost around $3 to ship each team in a bubbler (I think. Postage has gone up recently). So if you wanna send me a PWE of a card or two you think I wouldn't mind spending $3 on, that'd be great. Or, if you just want to take (you selfish bastard!), that, mayhaps. can be arranged too.

Some of the team piles are kinda weak. Some are kinda strong. They're all equally reviled in this House of Ohio.

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

The year 1979 was the last year the Reds would make the playoffs before their iconic underdog championship season of 1990. The Reds had a tremendous roster, having previously added Tom Seaver to The Machine to balance to exceptional hitting. The Reds would lose to the Pirates in the NLCS, then would fluctuate between good-not-great and awful in the 80's. But '79 being such a good year, and '79 Topps being such a good set, we get a nice 30-card team set of the Redlegs.

Topps reduced the Rookie multi-cards from four players to three, which is an improvement, and the cards featured only one team of rookies, which is much better than by position, but I don't understand the inexplicable black-and-white. Again, the All-Star designation is on the player's base card, robbing us of an extra few dozen cards, and in particular, four extra Reds cards. But we have a nice pair of George Foster League Leader cards and a Pete Rose Record Breaker card. Unlike the previous year's Topps set, we have a bunch of action shots, which I always prefer. Also, someone needs to explain to me why Pedro Borbon's text is blue and everyone else's is green.

The '73 Bench is one of the best cards from the 70's, showing a rare action shot of Bench snagging a Giants pop foul. The '57 Klu is one of the most iconic cards of all-time, showcasing Big Klu's custom jersey, which, of course, allowed the pythons to breathe.

Bench has had no problems advancing in any stage, easily coasting through its Round 1 and 2 groups and winning its bracket match-ups 14-0, 9-3, 8-3, 7-5, and 16-4. Kluszewski, hampered by its condition, wasn't very strong in Rounds 1 and 2, earning a mere 22 seed, but once it hit the brackets, it saw huge victories of 11-1, 11-4, 9-6, 10-2, and 15-4, upsetting the 11, 6, and 3 seeds along the way.

So, for the last time, let's get our votes in on the sidebar to crown The Red Cardboard Ridiculous Card Tournament Champion.

Sunday, January 26, 2014

I made an atypically expensive purchase recently. Expensive for a single card, that is. Normally I prefer a stack of commons over a single star, which explains some glaring holes in the collection. I'm missing a bunch of Pete Rose vintage. I'm missing a bunch of Ken Griffey Jr. cards from the early 2000s. I'm missing a bunch of Billy Hamiltons from recent sets. Quantity over quality.

But after a Sportlots debacle from a seller who has very clearly given up the business but is still accepting purchases from his inventory and giving out fake tracking numbers (user berk0523), I found myself with a few bucks sitting in my paypal account. I wasn't in the mood to sift through anyone's inventory, so I splurged on the titular card of this post. I like it so much, that it gets its own post.

As you can see, there's a nice mouse-bite on the top right corner. And some creasing. None of this is a big deal. This card is niiiiiiice. Very regal pose. This is by far the toughest '52 from the Reds team set that's not part of that ridiculous high number series, so I got that going for me. I have now 9 of the 28 card team set. Not terribly impressive, but that will be remedied.

The back is printed a bit awry. Also not a big deal. Does anyone wish that fielding stats were more prevalent on card backs today? With all the modern analysis, fielding is making a comeback as a point of pride, like it clearly used to be.

Well there ya go. Go over to the sidebar and vote on the Ridiculous Card Tournament semi-finals if you haven't already.

Saturday, January 25, 2014

These TTM's all came back to me in June. That's how far backed up I am. So here's a big ol' post of five 1980's Reds generous enough to bust out a sharpie.

Skeeter Barnes was born in Cincinnati, played college ball for the University of Cincinnati, was drafted by the Cincinnati Reds in 1978, and made his debut for Cincinnati in 1983. He played in 353 major league games in nine seasons and played in a whopping 1633 minor league games in 15 seasons. For the Reds, he hit in 52 games over three seasons. Signed is a 1985 Donruss #530.

Charlie Puleo pitched in 180 games in his 8 year career. He was traded to the Reds in 1983 for Tom Seaver, sending the Hall of Famer back to the Mets. Puleo garnered 7 wins for the Reds in 28 appearances in 1983 and 1984. Signed is a 1983 Topps #549.

Brad Gulden played for 6 teams in his 7 year career, including 107 games for the Reds in 1984. Gulden was traded from the Yankees to the Mariners for Larry Milbourne and a 'player to be named later'. One year later that 'player to be named later' turned out to be Brad Gulden, making him one of four players in history to be traded for himself. Sweet. Signed is a 1985 Topps #251.

Sheldon Burnside pitched in 19 career games over three seasons, the first two with Detroit, and his final year with the Reds. In 4.2 innings of work in 7 games for the Reds in 1980, Burnside gave up only one earned run and went 1-0. Signed is a 1981 Fleer #221.

Pat Pacillo was drafted by the Reds in 1984 and debuted with them in 1987. His entire two-year career would be with Cincinnati, pitching in 18 games in '87 and '88, going 4-3. Pacillo was also on the 1984 USA Olympic Team with future major league teammate Barry Larkin. Signed is a 1987 Topps Traded #93T.

Friday, January 24, 2014

This is the tenth part of my running theme, unimaginatively dubbed 'One and
Done'. Here, I focus on cards of Reds players who, whether it be their
only year in the bigs or their only year with the club, found themselves
on the Cincinnati roster for only one season, yet long enough to sneak
onto a card donning the Cincinnati red. That was a very convoluted
sentence that I am choosing not to edit.

Today we're looking at 1958-1959. These two years saw a massive 22 one-and-doners (12 and 10, respectively) in these two years, building up to their World Series appearance in 1961. I have a solid 12 of these in my collection.

Harvey "The Kitten" Haddix. 14 year career with 5 teams, 3x All Star, 3x Gold Glove, winning pitcher in Bill Mazeroski's walk-off World Series home run game, pitched 12 perfect innings in a game that would be lost in the 13th.

Thursday, January 23, 2014

I've gotten into the habit of scanning every new card I come across, for posterity I suppose. This means I have a big ol' folder of un-posted goodness with no real purpose. It's turned into random, lazy scan dumpings, like this one here. Today's theme will be Chrome, aka, The Dust Collector Parallel. So much static. So many errant electrons. I've made pretty good progress in going back in time for older Chrome sets. Wait about 6-8 years and they drop down to base card prices. Let's roll.

We'll start off strong with some Chrome Rookie Refractor goodness of Johnny Cueto. Here's hoping he can stay healthy this year.

2005 Topps. Sure.

2005 Bowman. Yep.

1999 Topps. Mmm hmm.

2012 Prizm. Not technically Chrome, but it's totally Chrome.

200something Bowman. I'm bad with recognizing Bowman sets.

More 200something Bowman.

2002 Topps with some Traded. Traded is tough to find.

Got some Bowman International, not to be confused with Bowman Chrome International. Both collect an ample amount of dust.

Hey how bout some 200something Bowman again? Alright.

What's that? 200something Bowman? Yessir.

And closing it out with some Topps. It seems like there should be some script on that team card. I thought I found a printing error or something, but nope. Just a lack of lettering.